number 1 - Centre d'études et de recherches européennes Robert ...

52
Elena Calandri
sections of Germany's enormously articulate and influential industry whose attitude
was, of course, crucial to the future of any Franco-German cooperation.
And yet the Joint Economic Committee on which sat all the large organizations
representing economic groups shared and supported Erhard's position and dismissed
the armaments pool as a typical product of French "dirigisme". This was
mainly under the influence of the powerful Bund der Deutschen Industrie (BDI)
which had set up a commission to deal with the French plan. At meetings with
French and Italian partners in December 1954 the BDI underwrote such general
aims as European standardization and the coordination and rationalization of production
but refused any shift towards centralized control, maintaining that such
aims should be implemented outside any supranational scheme, in free market regimes
and through direct relations among firms, although the lobby argued in favour
of a clearing house for armaments production. 50
The French plan enhanced contacts between German and French industrialists.
The Conseil National du Patronat Français was itself mildly enthusiastic at the prospect
of the new outburst of regulations and centralized control which the armaments
pool would produce. But French firms were keen to secure markets, to
protect their leading position in fields from which their German competitors had
been excluded since the end of the war and to develop links with German firms, so
the BDI's display of interest did not fall on deaf ears. The aircraft industry, in particular,
was an area suitable for rapid entente. Short of capital and with plant still
not rebuilt after the war some German aircraft firms, among whom were wellknown
prewar names such as Dornier, Messerschmitt and Heinkel were casting
about for ways of restarting their production so were all keen to cooperate with
French aircraft firms which had been successfully re-started after the wartime halt
to production and research but were still far behind the British and Americans.
They readily appreciated the advantages of coordinated production and division of
labour as well as a measure of state intervention and welcomed the initiative taken
by M. Jarry, President of the Association française des Ingénieurs et Techniciens de
l'Aéronautique (AFITA). After organizing in Paris, in December 1954, a congress
of European aeronautical technicians and producers M. Jarry accepted, early in
January, an invitation by the Deutsche Aeronautische Gesellschaft (DAG) to attend
the Association's General Assembly in Düsseldorf. There, in front of representatives
of federal and local ministries, the Amt Blank and various aircraft industry
unions he proposed a quick move towards the development of an exclusive bilateral
Franco-German partnership in aircraft manufacture. 51
49. See e.g. AMAE, Wormser, 87, Note sur la délégation allemande à la conférence sur le "Pool d'armements";
Haut Commissariat, OMS, Note d'information sur certaines réactions allemandes à
propos des négociations sur un pool des armements, no.231, 4 February 1955. W.L. ABELSHAU-
SER, "The Causes and Consequences of the 1956 West German Rearmament Crisis", in F.H. HEL-
LER and J.R. GILLINGHAM (eds.), NATO. The Founding of the Atlantic Alliance and the
Integration of Europe, London 1992, pp. 311-334:324-326.
50. E.g. ibidem. The attitude of industrial circles was regularly monitored by Coignard Winter to Summer
1954; details about German attitudes and actions in this article are mainly drown from his
dispatches to Wormser, 87.